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Sep 10, 2015

Who are the Acolytes of the Beyond from The Force Awakens? What is the connection to Kylo Ren and the Knights?

Early concept art of Kylo Ren with Vader's burnt helmet

"Acolytes of the Beyond" is a group of four words that dropped into Star Wars canon last week in the book Aftermath How they fit into the canon, we have no idea but we’re pretty to happy to speculate.

The book Aftermath introduced the acolytes who said to be trying to buy Vader's saber from someone to 'destroy it and return it to its master in death.

First of all, what is an acolyte? Is that something found in Gatorade? No, an acolyte is someone who performs religious duties as part of a ceremony or who has been inducted into a particular ministry.

In this case, the acolytes are presumably in the ‘ministry’ of whatever the Beyond is. We could presume the Beyond is the realm of the Force inhabited by Force ghosts such as Gui-Gon Gin, Obi-Wan Kenobi and good old Yoda.

Remember, if Qui-Gon can learn its tricks, so can Darth Sidious.

I definitely did deliberately leave out mentioning Anakin in that line up as I think it would seem obvious to suggest that given Kylo Ren is hunting down Sith artifiacts, including Vader's worldly possessions- see the above leaked concept art for the big hint.

For a long time prior to the release of Aftermath, the word on the street was that the saber given to Luke by Obi-Wan i.e. Anakin’s weapon is the so called MacGuffin of the The Force Awakens). It would seem this would be true given the reference to people hunting for Vader's saber in Aftermath (of course, the second trailer shows the saber being handed from Maz Katana to General Leia as well.....)

It's a waste of time though for the Acolytes as Vader reverted to Anakin after his death in Return of the Jedi. He has no need for a saber anymore...

If this is indeed true, it would seem a fair bet the Kylo Ren is an Acolyte of the Beyond or has some affiliation to it.

That said, JJ Abrams let it be known that Kylo Ren is part of what is called the Knights of Ren. We expect them to turn up in the Force Awakens as a kind of Sinister Seven – possibly in a flash back scene in which they kill a few Jedi. That’s all speculation of course. Well researched speculation though…

I'VE GOT MORE!

The above could be all wrong however. Here's a cut from the Aftermath book where a new interpretation of Beyond could mean.

"No Sith remains. And the lone Jedi that exists--the son of Anakin Skywalker--possesses an untouchable soul. At least for now. We must instead move towards the dark side. Palpatine felt that the universe beyond the edges of our map was where his power came from. Over the many years he, with our aid, sent men and women beyond known space. They built labs and communication stations on distant moons, asteroids, out there in the wilds. We must follow them. Retreat from the Galaxy. Go out beyond the veil of stars. We must seek the source of the dark side like a man looking for a wellspring of water."